Over the fourth, we took a trip to New York to visit Niagara Falls and to Buffalo to see James' brother and his family.  We had a fantastic time, and for being a "short" trip for four days, it seemed to last forever, which was great!  We had a great time as shown below.

We stayed at the Hilton in Niagara Falls, Ontario.  We happend to get a room on the 42nd floor of the hotel.  What an amazing view it was!  Here's looking at the "horseshoe" (or Canadian) falls.  Absolutely amazing!

I visited Niagara Falls many years ago, and while I remember a lot of it, there were a lot of things that I didn't remember.  Things seem really built up now and much more of a destination place than I remembered it to be.  This is from our hotel room looking at the "American" falls.

Tabs is at a stage where she's not keen at staying in her stroller.  She finds it much better to actually push the stroller.  So, instead of lugging the stroller on our trip, only to fight with her, we decided that we would take our"backpack" for her.  The first time we put her in it it was a fight, but once she realized the benefits of it she really liked it.  Of course "baby" had to come with.

We traveled on July 4.  So, in order to maximize the cuteness factor of traveling, we dressed Tabitha up appropriately.  It was quite humid in Canada, so her hair is curly.  She's enjoying coloring with about 20 crayons....this is all before the gourmet mac and cheese kids dinner arrived.

On July 5 we really got the opportunity to take it all in.  One of the experiences is walking across the bridge from Canada to the United States.  I captured this great shot of the two of them as we started our journey across.

Just five minutes later we came to the "official" border.  Here James is split between two countries :)  Tabs by this point had fallen asleep.

On July 6, we traveled to the Buffalo Zoo with our sister-in-law, who was a great tour guide!  Towards the end of the morning, Tabs decided to try out the train.  James volunteered to go with her.  She had a GREAT time.  Side note: we do not know the little boy sitting next to Tabitha.  As soon as she got on, he followed her onto the same car...even though there were plenty of other spaces to choose from.  His mom appropriately made the comment that he's a lady's man.

On Saturday we went with everyone to a fun children's museum.  It was the perfect museum for Tabitha and she loved trying all of the different things.  Here she is fishing with daddy.

Tabitha has always enjoyed using the stairs at our house, and now she rarely wants us to carry her either up or down as she is trying to show us what a big girl she is.  At the museum there was a fun structure with some stairs that were just right for Tabitha.  She had a great time climbing them and then running to the end of the structure to peak out at us.

Towards the end of our time there she tried her hand at rolling the ball down.  She got some good help from her daddy and made the ball go even further.

We were very thankful that James' brother and his family hosted us for several nights.  James captured this picture one evening before bed.  Our nephew is almost eight and he was really good about playing with Tabitha and putting up with her.  He was nice enough to even let Tabitha sit next to him on the couch for some cartoons.

If you couldn't tell we had a fantastic vacation!